StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Eleven people were killed in a wreck on Interstate 65 in Kentucky when a tractor trailer crossed the median and smashed into a church van.
• Earth Hour encourages everyone to switch off electricity for an hour at 8:30 PM local time tonight.
• The bloc of former Iraqi PM Ayad Allawi has claimed the most seats in Iraq's parliament, second-place Nouri al-Maliki's bloc is disputing the two-seat difference.
• Tensions are high as South Korea searches for 46 lost patrol boat crew members after an explosion sank the vessel near the North Korean border.
• Need to control your Mars rover robot from your iPhone?  Yeah, there's an app for that.

Last Call

Good news and bad news on the whole rolling back DADT thing.  The good news, the Defense Department is going to make it a lot tougher to expel anyone under the current rules.  Bad news, the Marines still aren't playing ball.

The Marine Corps' top officer says he would want to avoid housing gay and heterosexual Marines in the same rooms on base if the ban on gays openly serving in the military is lifted.


"I would not ask our Marines to live with someone that's homosexual if we can possibly avoid it," Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway told a Web site in an interview posted Friday. "And to me that means we've got to build [barracks] that have single rooms."

Asked about the possibility of gay and straight Marines living together, Conway told the site Military.com that he would "want to preserve the right of a Marine that thinks he or she wouldn't want to do that -- and that's the overwhelming number of people that say they wouldn't like to do so."

Conway said the Marine Corps is the only branch of the armed services that houses two to a room.

Marines.  You can ask them to die for their country.  Exquisitely trained, lavishly equipped, the soldier's soldier.  Ask them to deal with TEH GHEY however, and they can't take it like the rest of America.

Go figure.

Tick-Tick-Ticked Off

The situation is turning into a time bomb out there.  Ask Nashville resident Mark Duren.

Duren had just picked up his 10-year-old daughter from school and had her in the car with him.


"He pointed at the back of my car," Duren said, "the bumper, flipped me off, one finger salute."
But it didn't end there.

Duren told News 2 that Weisiger honked his horn at him for awhile, as Duren stopped at a stop sign.

Once he started driving again, down Blair Boulevard, towards his home, he said, "I looked in the rear view mirror again, and this same SUV was speeding, flying up behind me, bumped me."

Duren said he applied his brake and the SUV smashed into the back of his car.

He then put his car in park to take care of the accident, but Weisiger started pushing the car using his SUV.

Duren said, "He pushed my car up towards the sidewalk, almost onto the sidewalk."

Police say Harry Weisiger is charged with felony reckless endangerment in the incident.

 What caused this?  What was Mark Duren's offense?  What set off Harry Weisiger?
 
Duren had an Obama-Biden '08 bumper sticker.  Gotta love it.  Driving While Democrat, the newest rage.  Road rage, that is. 

A Fresh START

For an encore to health care reform, the President announced a new nuclear missile reduction treaty with Russia.

The agreement cuts by about one-third "the nuclear weapons that the United States and Russia will deploy," the president said.

The new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) will last 10 years, and builds on the previous agreement that expired in December.

"It significantly reduces missiles and launchers," Obama told reporters at the White House. "It puts in place a strong and effective verification regime. And it maintains the flexibility that we need to protect and advance our national security, and to guarantee our unwavering commitment to the security of our allies."

Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will sign the agreement April 8 in Prague, Czech Republic, Obama said, calling arms control "one of his administration's top national security priorities."

Information released by the White House says the new treaty limits both nations to "significantly fewer strategic arms within seven years" of its signing. One of the limits: 1,550 warheads. "Warheads on deployed ICBMs (Intercontinental ballistic missiles) and deployed SLBMs (submarine-launched ballistic missiles) count toward this limit and each deployed heavy bomber equipped for nuclear armaments counts as one warhead toward this limit," the White House said. There are also limits on launchers.

The treaty lays out a "verification regime" that includes on-site inspections, data exchanges and notifications, the White House said.

"The Treaty does not contain any constraints on testing, development or deployment of current or planned U.S. missile defense programs or current or planned United States long-range conventional strike capabilities," the White House said.

Obama said the agreement is part of the U.S. effort to "reset" the U.S. relationship with Russia.
"With this agreement, the United States and Russia -- the two largest nuclear powers in the world -- also send a clear signal that we intend to lead," the president said. "By upholding our own commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, we strengthen our global efforts to stop the spread of these weapons, and to ensure that other nations meet their own responsibilities."

Good news here.  Russia, after all, is an ally.  Republicans were angry with the President on Israel, saying that we treat our enemies better than our friends.  It'll be extremely difficult for the GOP to oppose this treaty without insulting Russia.  Where's the win here?  It's not like Americans want MORE nuclear weapons out there, especially on the Russian side.  (Aren't Republicans always screaming that "loose Russian nukes" could fall into the hands of terrorists on the black market?)

Nope, I'm betting this treaty is signed and ratified without too much trouble at all.

Preemptive Absolution

Digby has an excellent point:  the Wingers are so absolutely confident that violence is imminent that they are already publicly laying the groundwork for the narrative that the mean ol' Dems had it coming when it does:

I can hardly believe it, but apparently America's wife beaters have actually decided to use the defense that these Democrats are "asking for" death threats from the right wingers because they are "making them mad." I documented Sere and Cantor's warnings this morning, but there are more:

Breitbart: Congressional Black Caucus members went "searching for ... racism" by walking through Tea Party crowd

Graham tells Beck -- Beck! -- Tea Partiers "get mad" because they "don't like being called racist

Michael Graham: Pelosi was "asking for" response by carrying Medicare gavel

Rove warns Dems that discussing threats against them may "inflame emotions"

And on and on.  Blaming the victim isn't new in humanity's annals of, well, inhumanity, but the sheer rapidity at which this narrative is developing should scare the crap out of everyone.  The Wingers believe it's coming.  They are now completely counting on it and scrambling to save themselves.

They know that serious violence is very likely. They are simply inoculating themselves against the charge that it was their inflammatory rhetoric that caused it. It will be the Democrats complaining about their inflammatory rhetoric that made the teabaggers snap. If they'd just stayed quiet and not made daddy mad, he wouldn't have had to hit them.

The only thing these people should be doing is calming down their crazies. Instead they're ginning them up. Heckuva job.

They've lost control of this crazy train, and when it derails and people are hurt or worse, it's going to be nasty.  "You made us do this!" will be the battle cry of 2010.

What Bob Cesca Said

Eric Cantor indeed needs to retract his story.

He needs to retract his accusation that somehow liberals and Democrats are stoking the right-wing terrorism, and he needs to retract his ridiculous bullet story.

RICHMOND, Va. — Richmond police say the bullet that hit a window of Republican Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor's office had been randomly fired skyward.

Randomly fired skyward.

Retract, Mr. Cantor.

He won't.  Republicans will use this to continue to attack the Dems, and the Village will follow suit.  Six months from now, we'll still hear "Well, remember someone shot out Eric Cantor's window just after the health care vote, so it wasn't just Republicans who were violent, it was the Left too." 

Obama's a Muslim.

Al Gore invented the internet.

Liberals shot out Eric Cantor's office window.

Hell, FOX News will be telling the Cantor lie tomorrow still. Watch.

Growth Spurt

The final revision on Q4 2009 GDP numbers is out, and it's actually fairly good news on the surface.

Gross domestic product expanded at a 5.6 percent annual rate, the Commerce Department said in its final report for the fourth quarter, instead of the 5.9 percent pace it estimated in February. It was still the fastest pace since the third quarter of 2003.

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast GDP, which measures total goods and services output within U.S. borders, growing at a 5.9 percent rate in the October-December period. GDP increased at a 2.2 percent pace in the third quarter.

The department also said after-tax corporate profits grew 6.5 percent in the fourth quarter, slowing from a 12.7 percent rise in the prior period. It was below market expectations for a 10 percent gain. For all of 2009, after-tax profits fell 6.9 percent, the biggest decline since 2000.

Growth in GDP was lowered because contributions from business investment, consumer spending and inventories were revised down.

And then the bad news:

Much of the economy's recovery from the most brutal downturn since the 1930s has been driven by government stimulus and businesses being less aggressive in reducing inventories.

This has raised concerns that growth could sputter later this year when the boost from the two sources fades, given tepid consumer spending and high unemployment.

The good news is the stimulus worked.  The bad news is it was far too small.  Obama and the Dems may have won the battle on health care reform, but another stimulus package will be impossible because the GOP has no interest in seeing the economy improve, not when it's far easier to do nothing and blame Obama. The growth we've seen in the last several months is only because of the stimulus.  When it runs out, so does the economy.

Right around, oh, campaign 2010 season.

The Prodigal Frum Departs

Not that my personal opinion of David Frum was very high in the first place (the guy did write speeches for Dubya after all) but clearly the guy's widely-quoted "Waterloo" article speaking truth to power got him axed by the famed conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, despite the denials.  TPM's Zack Roth:

According to a source with knowledge of the situation, the split with AEI was not prompted by Frum's criticism of the GOP. Rather, Brooks expressed concern that Frum had been occupied with other projects outside of AEI, and wasn't a sufficiently active member of the AEI scholars community. Out of fairness to other AEI scholars, Brooks asked Frum to forgo his salary -- an offer Frum angrily rejected.

In a statement provided to TPMmuckraker, AEI said:

While AEI makes it a practice not to discuss personnel matters, I can say that David Frum is an original thinker and a friend to many at AEI. 

We are pleased to have welcomed him as a colleague for seven years, and his decision to leave in no way diminishes our respect for him.

Frum declined to comment to TPMmuckraker, but this afternoon he told the PlumLine that Brooks had asked him to work without pay, because of the think-tank's financial difficulties, and had assured him that the move had nothing to do with Frum's recent criticism of the GOP.

None of this has stopped speculation to the contrary, however. In a blog post of his own, conservative economist Bruce Bartlett -- who himself was fired by a conservative think tank in 2005 after criticizing President Bush's policies -- wrote today that Frum recently had told him that AEI scholars had been "ordered" not to speak publicly on the subject of health-care reform "because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do."

Several AEI scholars have gone public on the subject -- though all have been opposed to Obama's plan.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote this afternoon: "One has to assume that this is a response to his outspokenness about the Republican failure on health reform."

Yeah, AEI isn't fooling anyone on this.  Just like politicians never actually resign to spend more time with their families, Frum wasn't actually parting ways because of side gigs, either.  You don't lose a think tank job after being a Republican presidential speechwriter because there's no money in it.  Frum on the letterhead gave the AEI prestige, just like any other ex-White House staffer would do for any think tank (on either side of the aisle).  It's the equivalent of having a famous senior partner at a law firm or on a company's board of directors.

Frum deviated from the program, and they threw him overboard for it.  Critics of Obama say he's a tyrant because he doesn't tolerate dissenting views.  That's hysterical, because many of the dissenting views on his policies come from those on the Left.

However on the Right, it's a different story.  Frum spoke out against eliminationist rhetoric and GOP mendacity, and got his walking papers as a direct result.  Some tolerance of dissenting views you guys have over there...

Schaden-Kroog

Paul Krugman admits to the guilty pleasure of watching the GOP melt down over HCR, but as he says, that meltdown now means the Teabaggers are fully in charge of the insane asylum (emphasis mine):

To be sure, it was enjoyable watching Representative Devin Nunes, a Republican of California, warn that by passing health reform, Democrats “will finally lay the cornerstone of their socialist utopia on the backs of the American people.” Gosh, that sounds uncomfortable. And it’s been a hoot watching Mitt Romney squirm as he tries to distance himself from a plan that, as he knows full well, is nearly identical to the reform he himself pushed through as governor of Massachusetts. His best shot was declaring that enacting reform was an “unconscionable abuse of power,” a “historic usurpation of the legislative process” — presumably because the legislative process isn’t supposed to include things like “votes” in which the majority prevails.

A side observation: one Republican talking point has been that Democrats had no right to pass a bill facing overwhelming public disapproval. As it happens, the Constitution says nothing about opinion polls trumping the right and duty of elected officials to make decisions based on what they perceive as the merits. But in any case, the message from the polls is much more ambiguous than opponents of reform claim: While many Americans disapprove of Obamacare, a significant number do so because they feel that it doesn’t go far enough. And a Gallup poll taken after health reform’s enactment showed the public, by a modest but significant margin, seeming pleased that it passed.

But back to the main theme. What has been really striking has been the eliminationist rhetoric of the G.O.P., coming not from some radical fringe but from the party’s leaders. John Boehner, the House minority leader, declared that the passage of health reform was “Armageddon.” The Republican National Committee put out a fund-raising appeal that included a picture of Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, surrounded by flames, while the committee’s chairman declared that it was time to put Ms. Pelosi on “the firing line.” And Sarah Palin put out a map literally putting Democratic lawmakers in the cross hairs of a rifle sight.

All of this goes far beyond politics as usual. Democrats had a lot of harsh things to say about former President George W. Bush — but you’ll search in vain for anything comparably menacing, anything that even hinted at an appeal to violence, from members of Congress, let alone senior party officials.

No, to find anything like what we’re seeing now you have to go back to the last time a Democrat was president. Like President Obama, Bill Clinton faced a G.O.P. that denied his legitimacy — Dick Armey, the second-ranking House Republican (and now a Tea Party leader) referred to him as “your president.” Threats were common: President Clinton, declared Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, “better watch out if he comes down here. He’d better have a bodyguard.” (Helms later expressed regrets over the remark — but only after a media firestorm.) And once they controlled Congress, Republicans tried to govern as if they held the White House, too, eventually shutting down the federal government in an attempt to bully Mr. Clinton into submission.

Mr. Obama seems to have sincerely believed that he would face a different reception. And he made a real try at bipartisanship, nearly losing his chance at health reform by frittering away months in a vain attempt to get a few Republicans on board. At this point, however, it’s clear that any Democratic president will face total opposition from a Republican Party that is completely dominated by right-wing extremists.

The good news is finally, finally, the Democrats understand the GOP plan is to try to win back political gains by making it literally impossible for the Democrats to actually govern.  If the government is broken by Republicans and it fails to do its duty, the Republicans figure, it's the Democrats' fault.

The better news is that more and more of the Village is finally questioning that "logic" after a year plus of supporting it completely, that the Democrats had to give in to the Republicans and do everything they wanted was taken as conventional wisdom, and the Dems would capitulate.  That's the way Washington has worked since the Contract With America.

Only, the Dems are writing a new script.  And the Republicans have gone completely off their collective rockers in an effort to paint Obama as an Enemy Of The People that the people need to stop.

By what means, the GOP leaves to the bloody imaginations of some of the Teabaggers.  The principled opposition to Obama is the first casualty of this process.  Those who still can compose an argument that doesn't involve Obama being a Socialist, Marxist, Muslim sleeper agent, tyrant dictator or the Antichrist are the ones who should be taking on this eliminationist rhetoric with the most urgency.

StupidiNews!

• The Obama administration will offer additional relief to homeowners who are unemployed and underwater on their mortgage.
• The House and Senate have completed work on reconciliation fixes to the health care reform bill.
• California Gov. Schwarzenegger's emissions reduction bill faces a ballot initiative that would disable the law unless unemployment is under 5.5%.
• A new Bloomberg poll shows 90% of Tea Party voters believe America is Socialist, but 70% want Obama to create more jobs.
• Nearly half of Americans open spam e-mails, and nearly half of those who open them do so on purpose.

Last Call

Jon Chait is both right and dead wrong. 

He's right about the following:

The psychology of victory and defeat is a remarkable thing. A week ago, the Democrats were perceived to have an enormous political problem. Their agenda was stalled in Congress. There was a mass groundswell of public anger they had to contend with.

Suddenly those problems have been flipped on their head. Now Democrats don't have a problem because they can't pass anything, Republicans have a problem because they're obstructing everything. Whereas right-wing grassroots activism represented a public backlash against the Democrats, it's now seen as an extremist element that discredits the GOP. Political reporters are starting to construct a seamless narrative connecting the over-the-top rhetoric from GOP and conservative leaders, the unusual acts of obstructionism and legislative retribution (like canceling unrelated hearings as revenge for health care reform), and sporadic vandalism and threats of violence. For example, see Dana Milbank's column today.

Chait's right about that.  The Village respects a winner, until they can construct the narrative that the current winners are losers.  However, the problem is Chait's still missing the larger point on the GOP themselves:

We should keep a couple things in mind here. Just as the emotion of the moment exaggerated Democrats' panic and fear of action, the emotion of the moment is casting the Republican strategy in the worst possible light. It's not exactly a parallel situation, because Republicans are far less responsive than Democrats to mainstream media narratives. Still, Republicans are going to consider the strategy of refusing to engage Democrats in a different light in the wake of passing health care reform than they would have if the Democrats had fallen a few votes shy in the House.

I call complete bullshit on that.  The Republicans are doing what they always do when losing:  double down to attack the Dems.  If they had defeated this measure, they would still be doing the exact same thing they are now:  calling the Dems traitors, encouraging the fringe elements to rise up, and refusing to work with the Democrats on any legislation.  In fact, we'd be hearing that the Republican strategy of Party of No was exactly what America wanted them to do, and that they should do everything they can to obstruct the Democrats even more than they were.

Chait's mistake is that he still considers the Republican leadership as rational actors that make rational decisions.  They aren't.  All they care about is destroying Obama...that should be self-evident by now.

Karl Rove's Repeal Appeal

Turd Blossom is completely behind this one.

Polls may show a temporary increase in the president's popularity, but underlying public opinion about this law is not likely to change just because the president hits the trail to sell it. After all, he made 58 speeches before the measure passed, including two in prime time.

Before that string of speeches the public was in favor of the concept of health-care reform by a ratio of 2 to 1. Afterward, about 60% of the public was opposed to the president's plan. Those who strongly opposed outnumbered those strongly in favor by 2 to 1 or better in most polls.

Tens of millions of ordinary people watched the deliberations, studied the proposals, and made up their minds. Their concerns about spending, deficits and growing government power are not going away.

Nor is their opposition to ObamaCare. According to a new CNN poll, majorities of Americans believe that they will pay more for medical care, the federal deficit will increase, and that government will be too involved in health care under the president's plan.

Democrats claim they've rallied their left-wing base. But that base isn't big enough to carry the fall elections, particularly after the party alienated independents and seniors. The only way Democrats win a base election this year will be if opponents of this law stay home.

So, he declares, run on repeal!  Rove's had a stellar record so far, yes?  Just like in 2008 when he said "Go even more negative on Obama?"  By all means, as the President said today on repeal:

"Go for it."

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Dan Riehl again on the Winger futility of suing over Obamacare:

But I'm also unconvinced America will be content with a failed court action. The Constitution has been so twisted from its initial intent and from the people still may believe it means, I'm not sure the system can bridge the gap here. At some point, states may have to consider banding together to develop an approach with far broader implications for America in the end. I've never seen the kinds of lines being drawn in America I am witnessing today. And this issue is not going to quietly just slip away.

States banding together...hmm.  Why, that would be a group of states.  A...confederation of them, one might say.

Seems kind of eerily familiar...

Own The Darkness

Oliver Willis lays it out. (emphasis mine)

Looking around at the conservative blogosphere’s reaction to threats and actual violence versus Democratic lawmakers that instead of condemning the actions the right is actually excusing it, and in some ways, egging it on.

When the first dead body turns up as a result of tea party terrorism, they’ll own it, completely.

Nobody’s arguing that on the left there was strong protest to Bush’s ill-guided policies that resulted in the deaths of thousands, but there was no support for violence against Republican lawmakers the way there is today from the right. Democrats were not linking arms with anti-government protesters who entertained assassination fascinations with our leaders.

The conservative movement owns tea party terrorism and whatever may come of it.

No doubt the usual suspects will show up to justify the violence, but the fact of the matter at this point this talk equating the exercise of democracy with treason is going to cause blood to flow.  Even the Senate parliamentarian is under threat now.

Not only do most of the wingers I've seen expect violence, they already are working to blame these acts as "false flag" attacks carried out by "the angry left" to start a war.

Delusional to the end.

Shutdown Sequence

Hey America, want to assure yourselves of a federal government that doesn't work in 2011?  Vote Republican this fall!

A potential Republican majority may not be able to repeal healthcare reform, but they'd probably refuse to fund it, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said today.

Appearing on Fox News, Boehner acknowledged that if the GOP wins control of Congress in 2010, they may not be able to repeal the healthcare bill President Obama signed into law yesterday. Obama would be able to veto a repeal, and Republicans would probably not have the two-thirds majority necessary to override that veto.

"With a Democrat president for the next two and a half years, even if we gained the majority it's going to be very difficult to repeal this bill outright," Boehner said.

Nevertheless, Boehner said Congress could simply refuse to approrpriate the funds needed to execute reform.
"It's going to take appropriated funds to actually come through the process to fund the hiring of new employees to create these new bureacuracies," Boehner said. "I can't imagine that a Republican Congress is going to give this president the money to begin this process."

Orange Julius is already saying "Hell no you can't!"  That's a hell of a platform to run on, the Shut Down The Federal Government Over Funding Health Care Reform plank of the GOP.

At this point the GOP is so utterly bankrupt of ideas that the only thing they have left is threatening to destroy the government so that nothing works for anybody.  This is their big campaign message in 2010.

Good luck with that, Orange Julius.